Electrify
by BIFF1
Summary: A guilt trip from Logan has landed Dick in a crowded tent with Mac. With a lightening storm raging outside he can't sleep and it appears neither can she.
1. Three man tent

**Electrify**

Rain pelted down on the three man tent housing four 'men', the flash of light threw shadows across the nylon, long claws flashing into existence and then fading into nothing, the roll of thunder causing the hair on his arms and neck to rise.

He rolled onto his side, the flannel caught around his legs, twisting the whole sleeping bag.

Another flash of lightening, it's brilliance lighting up every corner of the tent.

Mac was looking at him, she looked surprised to be caught and quickly rolled onto her back.

This whole tent thing was her fault, apparently she had told Logan about family bonding in the woods, something Logan sure as hell had never done, and _he'd_ never actually seen a tent in real life before. Logan had decided that he wanted to bond in the woods with his _family_ which seemed to consist of Veronica, Mac and himself. A small guilt trip later and they had all been packed into the x-terra on the road to adventure.

Logan and Dick's complete inexperience had lead to the current sleeping arrangements. Mac had brought a tent for herself and Veroncia and Dick and Logan had brought...beer.

Another flash illuminated the interior of the tent and he could see Veronica and Logan on the other side of Mac sound asleep, Ronnie's arm thrown over Logan.

"Cindy?" he whispers and she turns quickly back to him, eyes wide with surprise. Surely the fact that he knows her name is surprising to her, and he's surprised to be using it, it was always Cassidy's name for her and she must feel that too because he knows no one else has gotten away with the C word.

"What Richard?" she asks, and the sleep hangs on her words and his name sounds thick in her throat, like there's more to it then just a name.

He grabs a hold of her sleeping bag and pulls her to him, her arms trapped inside the flannel and nylon tube. His mouth crashes against hers and she's frozen for a moment before he feels her grab onto him through her sleeping bag. She moves against him and it sends feeling surging through his blood like a jump start, white hot electricity to match that flashing across the sky. She bites his lip and her tongue is in his mouth and it jump starts him, his heart slamming against his ribs. His hand moves from the sleeping bag to her hair and she snakes her arms around him, into his hair, on his neck holding him to her, and she's pressed up against him and he's almost off the air mattress (that he had to blow up) and another push of her mouth and he's in the space between the mattress and the tent wall and Mac is on top of him.

They knock teeth at the small thump and she pulls away from him, "Max." she tells him, or herself, softly and she rolls back away from him.

When he finally manages to get himself back on the air mattress she's turned away from him and her sleeping bag is done up over her head.

He watches the rain pelt the fabric of the tent and tries to think of the least sexy things he can because Mac's has jolted and jilted him. The energy surging through him is ridiculous, it shakes his hands and he has to do math in his head to calm down.

He had forgotten she had a boyfriend, it was so easy to do since in his mind she was his? his brothers? She belonged with a Casablancas it was a simple as that.

Except she had to keep going around making it complicated.

A/N: Electrify came up on a prompt table I saw and this little piece popped into my head. I wouldn't mind expanding it into a full on Logan wants to bond camping trip story if anyone would want to read it.


	2. God I love camping

**A/N:** Due to popular demand here ya go!

**Chapter two: Logan loves camping**

Logan wakes up first, he's not sure if it's because he's gotten used to getting up early to surf or if he just really has to pee.

He sits up surprised that he doesn't have to carefully remove Veronica from him to do so. He looks back at the mass of limbs and flannel and a smile pulls softly across his face.

Dick at the far end of the tent has his arm thrown across the mattress and both Mac and Veronica seem to be using it as a secondary pillow, the bottom of Mac's sleeping bag covering Veronica's and Veronica has Mac wrapped up in her arms.

This is what family is.

Finally. There isn't a single person in this tent that he's afraid of, not a single wave of stomach tightening nauseas.

He wants to throw himself on the pile of the people he loves most in the world and just get lost in them but nature is calling and it refuses to be put on hold any longer. He crawls to the front of the tent stuffs his feet into his shoes and tries to quietly open the tent.

Everything outside is wet, large puddles cling to the sides of the packed dirt road on his way to the bathroom. He's only ever gone to the bathroom outside when he was fall down drunk and that was always against a wall or an offending bush so this is a whole different experience. The air is crisp and clean and great, everything is a bright green like some kid came along in the night and colored everything in, everything is just a vibrant crayola version of what he always assumed nature to actually look like. Turns out all the national geographic crap wasn't lying after all.

He gets it.

He totally gets why Mac's family packs her up twice a year for this. He stands on the crest of the hill, looking out over the bright green hills and the dark green jagged teeth of mountains and can see the shimmer of the lake peeking out at him through the forest and parts of tents and the tailgates of trucks and stretches.

"God I love camping." He finishes the short distance to the bathroom does his business and starts the walk back to camp.

He'd had Mac help him pick a campsite and she'd done a great job, it was a lot of trees and seclusion and a short totally bareable distance from the bathrooms and a short distance to the lake. She'd been happy to help him pick it out...when she had thought that he was just going on this 'family camping trip' with Veronica and Dick.

Veronica had been easy and Dick...well he threw around phrases like_ 'your my brother'_ and _'only family I really have'_ and moped and he had agreed before the close of the business day but Mac had actually put up a little bit of a fight.

_I'm not your family Logan_

_Friends are the family you choose_

She'd rolled her eyes but he knew she was in because she'd followed it up with _do you even know how to build a fire?_ she couldn't very well leave him alone in the woods with Dick and Veronica who had the combined outdoors experience of a Beverly Hills Wilderness Girl...although they did win that jamboree so maybe they would have been okay.

He stopped at the Saturn and pulled out Veronica's camera before returning to the tent. He slowly unzipped the tent and bit back a smile because they had shifted slightly in his absence Dick's other arm was draped across Mac pulling her closer while Mac's arms were around Veronica keeping the blond close.

He knew the flash would wake them but it would be totally worth it.

**FLASH**

The tent was an explosion of arms, legs, cussing and laughter and Logan fell out onto the grass the camera in his hands.

"Dude!" Dick yells climbing out of the tent still half in his sleeping bag his shoes in his hand, "not cool!" Dick seems a little extra pissed so Logan raises an eyebrow and Dick just grunts and shrugs it off, falling onto the ground and kicking the sleeping bag off.

Once he's finally free of the nylon cocoon the tent shuts behind him.

Dick lays on the ground next to Logan his legs in the air trying to shove the sneakers onto his feet without untying them.

Logan smiles softly at his handy work in the camera display and shows Dick, "look how cute you guys are." He tells him with a laugh but Dick's sour mood remains intact, "dude what's your problem? It's gorgeous out here." He spreads his arms indicating the bright blue sky rimmed with trees above them.

"Yeah...purple mountains majesty, it's a god damn national anthem out here." He grumbles and pushes away and Logan can see him make his way towards the bathroom.

Maybe what he needed was some breakfast, he knew he sure did. He rolled over and looked at the fire pit.

It couldn't be that hard right?


	3. Sparkles and Unicorns

**Chapter Three:** Sparkles** and Unicorns**

* * *

She feels wrong all over.

She's the worst person to ever breath.

And she's worried that a large part of her doesn't even seem to care.

She has a boyfriend.

She has a boyfriend...She shouldn't have to remind herself of that fact, but she finds that she repeatedly has to remember to put hormones on lock down because she is with someone else. She wonders briefly if something is wrong with her because she was sure that when you cared about someone and were in a committed relationship you weren't even supposed to have those kinds of feelings for anyone else.

None of that gut tightening, skin too hot, electricity.

Cindy Mackenzie has a boyfriend, she is dating a perfectly nice boy, who is completely smitten with her and who understands what she's talking about when she goes all tech crazy, a boy who doesn't look at her like they're just waiting for her to break apart at the seams.

Then why did she let herself get swept away by Dick last night during a god damn thunder storm like she was in some god awful romantic flick, then why did she let his arms grab onto her and hold her close. She had woken up when Logan left the tent and had been perfectly content, happy even to let Dick grab onto her hip and hold her close to just lay there in his arms, protected and comfortable.

The answer was simple, she was a terrible person.

Pretending to be asleep wasn't the same as being asleep. If she had been properly asleep maybe it wouldn't have counted. Damn Logan for leaving the tent and waking her up, and damn him for coming back and taking photgraphic evidence of what a terrible girlfriend she was.

"God I hate camping." she falls back violently onto the air mattress and almost winds herself on the ground, the air mattress has gotten shockingly low during the night, she's not sure why she's surprised Dick had finished blowing up the thing pretty quick no matter how full of hot air he was, and with the weight of Logan and Dick no longer pushing all the air underneath herself and Veronica she might as well be laying on the ground. With them gone she's cold, on the ground, and feels absolutely terrible.

"Me too." a Veronica shaped lump of blankets responds and Mac crawls over to the mound of sleeping bags and pillows because in spite of everything that looks really comfortable.

Mac tries to wiggle her way underneath but Veronica's clamped down hard on the edges, "Come on Veronica let me in."

"Admit this whole camping thing is your fault."

Mac sighs unhappily but gives in, "fine it's all my fault we had to go camping even thou all I said was that my family takes us to the woods to bond, and it was Logan who took the idea and run with it like an idiot." Veronica whips the blanket upwards and rolls with it until Mac is also covered in the tent within a tent.

"Now that wasn't so hard was it." Veronica smiles at her, the light filtering in through a gap between a couple of pillows.

"This is nice," Mac sighs out letting herself relax into the blankets, the combined heat of the blankets and Veronica feels really comfortable, soothing even, "Lets just spend the whole trip in here."

"Do you think they'll bring us food?" Veronica asks as her stomach makes itself heard and they dissolve into laughter. With reluctance they push away the blankets and start to get dressed, so that Mac can start making breakfast, she can only imagine the kind of trouble the boys would get in if they tried to start a fire after that kind of rain storm.

_Whoomp_

The side of the tent facing the camp light up with light as the sound of a large fire eating up oxygen assaulted there ears.

"Shit!" Logan's voice cried out and Veronica was ripping open the zipper and running out of the tent before Mac had managed to grab a sweater to throw over her bra and rush outside.

Logan was on the ground beside what was basically a bonfire larger than both girls.

"What have you done!" Veronica was yelling throwing a bucket of water onto Logan's burnt sweater.

Mac focused on getting the fire down to a manageable level, the whole fire pit reeked of lighter fluid, "Did you use lighter fluid to start the fire?" She turns back to look at Logan wide eyed. He's sitting on the picnic bench looking at the burnt edges of his Hearst sweatshirt, the male match to the one Mac had thrown over her head.

"Well how was I supposed to start the fire? Everything was wet." He rolls her eyes like she's just being silly.

"How about with the wood I put under the tarp last night when it started to rain? Did you think I was practising for the Taber toss?"

"Well I would hope not, you'd have a long way to go." He smiles at her and she just shakes her head, there are two empty canisters of lighter fluid by the bench and she is positive that she didn't bring a single one.

"Where did you even get the lighter fluid?"

Veronica comes back from the car, a first aid kit in her hand and she stands by Mac, hand on her hip waiting for the answer as well, "Well?"

Logan just looks oddly proud of himself and shrugs, "People are really friendly around here."

Veronica's face twists into something she's not sure is jealousy or anger. It's probably both. The blond sits down on the bench next to him and starts slathering his arm in burn ointment, "You are not allowed to make any more _friends_ Mr. " She tells him harshly slapping pink and purple band aids onto his arm. Mac isn't sure but it looks like from here they have sparkles and unicorns on them.

"And you're not allowed to touch the fire again." Mac tells him what she hopes it firmly.

"What?!" Logan's voice is a weird mix of hurt and outraged.

"You want to go back to town with no eyebrows? Cause I can tell you know it won't be a good look for you." Mac tells him with a firm tone that she hopes shows that she really means it. She sighs, "I don't want you to get hurt." She adds and watches as the rough and tumble Logan Echolls softens.

She looks at the pair on the bench, Veronica taking extra care to be just the right amount of rough so he knows she's upset but not rough enough to actual hurt him and Logan looking at her with soft eyes and a defeated smile. Marshmellows, the pair of them.


	4. Multitasker

**Chapter Four: Multitasker**

* * *

Logan's skin was warm under her fingers as they both looked at Mac, the smothered bonfire lighting her up from behind as she stood there and she could feel Logan softening.

The mussels under his skin relaxed and she could tell that somehow Logan had pulled Mac into the heart of him as well. She wondered what had done it for him thou, if it had been the image of her wet and mostly naked and crying, if he wanted to protect the girl like she did or if it was something else, if they had bonded over how hard it is to care for a Mars.

She shakes her head and reminds herself that the world doesn't revolve around her.

In fact this camping trip is all about Logan. Logan and his desire for an actual family, for something real and loving and solid and she actually gets that. It hadn't taken very much pushing to get her to agree she had after all been there, standing a little off to the side while his family had fallen apart and she had ALWAYS been more family than Trina.

"I can show you how to cook over the fire," Mac tells her pulling two frying pans out of her magic camping tickle trunk. Seriously Mac is like a camping god, she may say she hates camping but she is crazy good at it.

Veronica stands up dragging her fingers across Logan's skin as she does so and watches the smile snake across his face. That weirdo is having the time of his life, she can tell, first degree burns and all.

She takes a frying pan from Mac and follows her to the fire, grabbing the cooler as she goes.

Sitting down next to Mac with the camp fire tainted fresh air accosting her lungs the weight of the pan in her hand she watches as Mac moves the pan skillfully in and out of the flame. The calm of the forest is a strange thing that she's not quiet comfortable with but it's something that Mac just seems to melt into, like she belongs in the quiet calm of nature more than the buzzing wired world she craves. If it wasn't for the fact that Mac carries her stress in her shoulders she'd have no idea that something was wrong with her.

Honestly she doesn't know why her friends don't just automatically tell her everything because she can read that something is wrong and Mac is her best friend and she is driven by the image of her sitting wet and naked and alone. She had made a promise to herself that day, her arms wrapped around the small wet Mac that nothing would hurt her again.

"You okay?" She finds herself asking and Mac's eyes widen slightly in surprise and even she's surprised in her tone. It's too soft. Like she expects her words to just push Mac apart, like she's made of wet paper or something.

"Aside from camping with the noob over there? Yeah." She lies and she's pretty sure they both know that she's lying, and that she knows she knows she's lying. Ugh that could get confusing. Mac is just waiting her lip raked under her teeth to find out if this is a lie Veronica is willing to let her have.

And for now it is.

"Christ what the hell happened to you?" Dick's boisterous and abrasive voice slams out across the calm quiet shattering the beautiful thing. He's standing by the tent his hair wet and his shirt in his hand.

She catches Mac's eyes drag across the expanse of skin and then quickly back to the fire. Dick notices as well but says nothing. And suddenly Mac's nothing is wrong lie isn't one she's so willing to let be.

"I'm not allowed to touch the fire anymore." Logan supplies and Dick moves across the campsite, still totally without shirt, to sit down next to Logan. Veronica is oddly sure that he's topless purely to mess with Mac and much to her surprise it seems to be working for even thou Mac's eyes are glued to what she's doing her face has flushed.

"What the hell happened?"

"Logan decided to make friends and get some lighter fluid." Veronica supplies and is pleased that her tongue is sharp she doesn't think she can live with herself if she let Dick get to her like Mac and Logan and Wallace.

"Yeah I almost burnt down the campsite...so Scout Master says I'm not allowed to touch the fire anymore."

"Yeah, I had a conference call with Smokey the bear and he agrees." Mac looks up at him and Logan looks deflated she let's out a laboured sigh at the sight, "if your a good boy I'll show you how to cut firewood." She watches Logan's eyes light up and she can't help but find herself wanting to keep him that way, safe and happy.

"Hey V?" Dick raises an eyebrow at her, what could he possible have to say? She can't think of a single dirty reference he could have about her cooking over a fire.

"What?"

"I don't think the eggs are supposed to be flambe." Startled she jumps up holding the flaming eggs at arms length away from the fire.

"What do I do! What do I do! What do I do?! Mac!" She jumps around trying to find something to put the eggs out without getting close enough to anything to put it in danger of bursting into flames of solidarity.

Calmly Mac puts a lid over the flame, rolling her eyes like she can't believe she has to camp with people who don't even know what to do if there's a fire. In her defence the egg fire was a surprise and she's never needed to put out a fire before.

They have a breakfast of potatoes and coffee, the eggs and bacon she had in her pan cremated. If Mac thinks she's too busy trading barbs with Logan about domestic duties and how even caveman had managed to build a fire to notice the weird air between Dick and Mac she is sorely mistaken, she's always prided herself in being a multitasker.

* * *

A/N: a couple more chapters and I'll have this nice and wrapped up. Hope you like this chapter I wrote this one while on vacation at a lodge that had no internet access...gawd i missed you internet, did you miss me?


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